My dad very kindly reminded me that I am turning forty next year. And while I initially looked at him with horror, it made me reflect on the different decades and eras of my life.
And I noticed one thing. I am so blessed to feel like I haven’t wasted any of it.
Everything happened for a reason, at the time it was meant to.
The nights spent clubbing gave me amazing memories that I wouldn’t trade for anything. The feeling of walking up the nightclub stairs, that merry pre-drinking glow, hand-in-hand with my sister, hearing the music get louder with every step until we reached the bar where the guy I was secretly a bit in love with was working, is irreplaceable. Hearing Sean Paul’s ‘Get Busy’ being played when your name is Rebecca was priceless.
As Victoria in the 2019 Cats adaptation sings “The memories were lost long ago… but at least you have beautiful ghosts.” And they are beautiful.
But this era were also spent working, from a part-time sales assistant to a store manager. Early morning bus rides in the dark and rain, visits from Head Office that had me shaking in my boots, teams that grew to become friends and the inside jokes we all had. While many people see retail as just a job rather than a career, it gave me the foundation to build an independent life and helped me grow immensely as a person.
I moved out of my family home into my first flat on my own, in a completely new town and a new county, all because of that career. And although the customers drove us all a bit mad at times, I’ll always look back on that period fondly and never see it as wasted time.
I spent my twenties being a bit messy. Messy relationships, rom-com style declarations of love, late nights, going into work the next day slightly hungover—but that’s what your twenties are for.
Moving into my thirties felt different. Not in a loud, life-changing way all at once, but in a quieter shift where things began to settle into place. This is the decade where I had my children. Where I got married. Where I bought my first house. Where I learned to drive. I finished my degree, published books and finally learnt how to fold a fitted sheet. On paper, it probably reads like a list of milestones people expect you to reach by a certain age.
And I know how that can land.
Social media has a way of turning those things into a measuring stick. It’s so easy to scroll and feel like you’re behind, or ahead, or doing life “wrong” depending on what boxes you have or haven’t ticked. But that’s not what this is about for me. I didn’t do any of those things because I felt I was supposed to by societal expectations.
I did them because I wanted to. Because they made my life feel complete. They were choices I made at the time because they felt right for me, for the life I was building, for the version of myself I was becoming.
I built a home, not just in the physical sense, but in the way my life began to take shape around the things that mattered most to me. I stepped into responsibilities that grounded me. I created stability where there once wasn’t any. I grew in ways that weren’t always visible from the outside, but felt deeply significant from within. I have come so far from where I began in life and for me that is a huge positive.
It wasn’t always easy. It wasn’t always glamorous. I didn’t just land on my feet. There were moments of doubt, of exhaustion, of wondering if I was getting it right. But none of that makes it wasted. It makes it lived. I think there’s a quiet power in being able to look back on a decade and know that, regardless of how it might look to someone else, it was yours. Fully, intentionally yours.
My thirties weren’t about meeting expectations. They were about meeting myself where I was, and choosing what I wanted from there. There’s so much of life you simply can’t control. When you’re almost forty, like I am, you realise that more than a quarter of it was never really yours to shape. Your whole childhood is mapped out for you—what to do, where to go, what to eat, what to wear, when, how, why. You follow instructions long before you ever get the chance to question them.
And that’s why I feel so fortunate.
Because in the years that came after, the ones that were mine to choose, I chose in a way that felt right for me. Not perfectly, not always with certainty, but with a sense of instinct that I trusted more often than I ignored. When I look back now, it’s not about whether every decision was the “right” one—it’s that they were mine
Spending the past ten years building my home has changed me in ways I didn’t expect.
Not just the physical home, but everything that comes with it. The life inside it. The people in it. The feeling of it.
It’s made me realise that the most important things in my life exist under my own roof. And once you realise that, everything else becomes a lot clearer.
If someone in my life doesn’t align with that—if they bring stress, discomfort, or just don’t fit into the life I’ve built—they’re gone. Not in a dramatic way. Not in a cruel way. Just… quietly removed. Because I don’t have space for anything that disrupts what I’ve worked so hard to create. My space is safe for me and my children and it will stay that way.
The same goes for anything else, too.
If a company doesn’t treat me the way I expect to be treated as a customer, I don’t use them again. Simple as that. I’m not chasing, not complaining endlessly, not giving second chances out of obligation. I just move on.
There’s no more people-pleasing.
If I don’t want to go somewhere, I don’t go. If I don’t want to do something, I don’t do it. There’s no long explanation, no guilt, no trying to soften it into something more acceptable. I now just say, “I don’t want to.”
And that’s enough.
I think that’s one of the biggest changes as I’ve got older. Realising that my time is mine. It doesn’t need to be spent proving anything to anyone else. Even things like trends don’t have the same hold anymore.
I spent my twenties keeping up, trying things, figuring out what fit and what didn’t. And I’m glad I did. But now? I dress how I want. I choose comfort. I choose what feels like me. I don’t feel the need to follow anything just because it’s current.
There’s a quiet confidence in that. A kind of freedom that doesn’t need to be announced or justified. It’s just there.
And I think that’s what boundaries really are at this stage of life. Not walls, not ultimatums—just a clear understanding of what belongs in your life, and what doesn’t. And the willingness—and sometimes strength—to act on it. Sometimes we may fail at that, and that’s okay. Because its my life and I said it is.
And then there’s the part I don’t talk about as easily.
The thing I do sometimes miss. The feeling that came with being younger. That sense that anything could happen.
The nights out, the ones I talked about before, weren’t really about the clubbing itself. I’m far beyond that now. These days, 9.30PM rolls around and I’m ready for bed without a second thought. I don’t miss being out until all hours or the chaos that sometimes came with it.
But I do miss what it represented.
That feeling that the night could take you anywhere. That the bar guy you like might be working that night. That a conversation, a moment, a decision could change the course of everything. There was an openness to life then. A kind of endless possibility that sat just under the surface.
My life now is fuller, but it’s also more structured. It has roots. It has responsibility. It has people and things that matter in a way that means I can’t just drift wherever the moment takes me. And sometimes, I feel nostalgic for that.
I grieve it a little.
But I also understand it. Because I didn’t lose that version of life by accident. It was the cost of building this one.
The stability. The home. The relationship. The life I’ve created with intention and care. The things I cherish most came from choosing something steady over something uncertain. And that doesn’t mean life is over. Not even close.
It just means spontaneity looks different now.
We’re sat here talking about potentially packing everything up and moving four hours across the country to Cumbria. And that, in itself, is its own kind of adventure. Its own version of “anything can happen.”
It’s not loud or impulsive in the same way it used to be. But it’s still there. Just quieter. More deliberate. And to me, in some ways, even more meaningful.
I wasn’t sure what life at forty would look like when I was younger. Mostly because it sounded ancient. But now I’m here, I’m blessed to realise that I can look back without regrets and that there’s so much more to look forward to. For now, I’m just a millennial on the cusp of menopause, baking bread, raising her daughters the best she can and writing random thoughts on the internet.
And for me, that feels like a pretty peaceful place to turn forty.
